Dealing with conflict in the workplace

I recently read an interesting article on managing conflict in the workplace. The author said that while we tend to see conflict centering around ideas or behaviors, it’s actually driven by emotion. The article offered some useful tips for detaching from the difficult emotions that are kicked up by conflict and dealing with it openly and where possible, pro-actively. I want to expand on this idea by looking at how we treat emotion in the workplace.

I find the culture of most organizations and the business community as a whole accepts only a restricted range of emotions. Think about the emotions you feel comfortable demonstrating at work. Enthusiasm? Calm? Attentiveness? Courage? Gratitude? Probably all these emotions are acceptable in your organization’s culture. What about fear? Anger? Sadness? Anxiety? Confusion? Disappointment?  In most of the places I have worked, these emotions are supposed to be hidden or masked in some way, or not acknowledged at all.

No one is capable of only feeling certain emotions when at work. The strain of hiding our other emotions from ourselves and others adds to the stress we already feel when working.

Psychologist Magda Arnold theorized that all humans feel 11 basic or core emotions:

How many of these emotions do you feel comfortable expressing openly at work? Probably only two or three. Business culture, regardless of where you work, is very restrictive about how we demonstrate our feelings.

I’m not espousing that we ignore the “rules” in our organizations. Social rules are important to the functioning of organizations.  I am suggesting is that we re-address some of the coping mechanisms we have developed for following these rules. Denial, projection, and disassociation from intense emotions cause stress in individuals and shadow (unwanted) behaviors in organizations. Behaviors we label as “political”, such as gossip and rumors, often emerge as a pressure valve for the emotions we can’t formally recognize.  The further you push certain emotions out of your conscious awareness, the more likely they are to cause unintended problems to your emotional state of being, your organization, and your health.

Rather than avoiding or denying our negative emotions at work, it’s important to recognize and name them to ourselves, lest they become submerged. When we are aware of our feelings, we can find ways to express them that are acceptable within the culture of the organization. All of our emotions, positive and negative, give us vital information about ourselves and those around us.